Trace (53 page)

    
"Oh God," he groans, shutting his eyes. "That bitch. It was between us."

    
"Us?"

    
"Suz and me. Couples do things."

    
"And who else? You have other people over playing your games?"

    
"It was my private home."

    
"What a pig you are," Lucy says menacingly. "Doing shit like that in front of a little girl."

    
"Are you FBI?" He opens his eyes, and they look dead with hate, like shark eyes. "You are, aren't you. I knew it would happen. I should have known. As if my life has to do with anything. I knew it. I've been set up."

    
"I see. The FBI forced you to make me take my clothes off for a routine flight physical."

    
"It has nothing to do with anything. It doesn't matter."

    
"I beg to differ," she replies sarcastically. "It matters all right. You're going to find out just how much it matters. I'm not the FBI. You aren't that lucky."

    
"This is all about Gilly?" He is more relaxed in the chair, defeated and barely moving. "I loved my daughter. I haven't seen her since Thanksgiving and that's the God's truth."

    
"The puppy," Benton cues her, and Lucy considers ripping the receiver out of her ear.

    
"You think someone killed your daughter because you're a snitch for Homeland Security?" Lucy knows better, but she is going to get him. "Come on, Frank. Tell the truth! Don't make it worse for yourself!"

    
"Someone killed her," he repeats. "I don't believe it."

    
"Believe it."

    
"That can't be."

    
"Who came to your house to play the game? You know Edgar Allan Pogue? The guy living behind your house? Living where Mrs. Arnette used to live?"

    
"I knew her," he says. "She was a patient of mine. Hypochondriac. Damn pain in the ass, really."

    
"This is important," Benton says, as if Lucy doesn't know. "He's confiding. Be his friend."

    
"Your patient in Richmond?" Lucy asks Dr. Paulsson, and the last thing she wants is to be his friend, but she softens, acts interested. "When?"

    
"When? Oh God. Forever ago. Actually, I bought our Richmond house from her. She owned a number of houses in Richmond. At the turn of the century, her family owned the whole damn block, was one big estate, got divided up for members of her family, eventually for sale. I bought our house from her, for a bargain. Some bargain."

    
"Sounds like you didn't like her much," Lucy says, as if she and Dr. Paulsson get along fine, as if he wasn't molesting her a few minutes ago.

    
"She'd come by the house, my office, whenever she wanted. Pain in the ass. Always complaining."

    
"What happened to her?"

    
"Died. Eight, ten years ago. Long time ago."

    
"Of what?" Lucy asks. "What did she die of?"

    
"She'd been sick, had cancer. She died at home."

    
"Details," Benton says.

    
"What do you know about it?" Lucy asks. "She alone when she died? She have a big funeral?"

    
"Why are you asking all this?" Dr. Paulsson sits in the chair, looking at her. But he is feeling better because she is friendly. It's obvious.

    
"It might be related to Gilly. I know things you don't. Let me ask the questions."

    
"Careful," Benton warns her. "Keep him close."

    
"Well, ask me then," Dr. Paulsson says snidely.

    
"Did you go to her funeral?"

    
"I don't remember her having one."

    
"She must have had a funeral," Lucy says.

    
"She hated God, blamed him for all her aches and pains, for nobody wanting to be around her, which was understandable if you knew her. What a disgusting old lady. Just intolerable. Doctors don't get paid enough to treat people like her."

    
"She died at home? She was that sick with cancer and died all alone at home?" Lucy asks. "She was in hospice?"

    
"No."

    
"She's a wealthy woman and dies all alone at home, no medical care, nothing?"

    
"More or less. Why does all this matter?" His eyes move around the examination room, and he is alert and more confident.

    
"It matters. You're making things better for yourself. A lot better," Lucy assures him and threatens him at the same time. "I want to see Mrs. Arnette's medical records. Show them to me. Pull her up on your computer."

    
"I would have purged her record. She's dead." His eyes mock her. "Funny thing about Dear Mrs. Arnette is she donated her body to science because she didn't want a funeral, because she hated God, and that was that. I guess some poor med student had to work on the old bitch. I used to think about that from time to time and feel sorry for the poor med student whose luck of the draw was to get her withered, ugly old body." He is calmer and more sure of himself, and the more confident he gets, the more Lucy's hatred rises like bile.

    
"The puppy," Benton says in her ear. "Ask him."

    
"What happened to Gilly's puppy?" Lucy asks Dr. Paulsson. "Your wife says their puppy disappeared and you had something to do with it."

    
"She's no longer my wife," he says, his eyes hard and cold. "And she's never had a dog."

    
"Sweetie," Lucy says.

    
He looks at her, and something glints in his eyes.

    
"Where's Sweetie?" Lucy asks.

    
"The only Sweetie I know is me and Gilly," he says, a smirk on his face.

    
"Don't be funny," Lucy warns him. "There's nothing funny about any of this."

    
"Suz calls me Sweetie. She always has. And I called Gilly Sweetie."

    
"That's the answer," Benton says. "That's enough. Get out."

    
"There's no puppy," Dr. Paulsson says. "That's a lot of shit." He leans into the conversation more, and she sees what is coming. "Who are you?" he asks. "Give me the pen." He gets up from the chair. "You're just some stupid little girl sent in to sue me, aren't you? Think you're getting money. You see how foolish this is, don't you? Give me the pen."

    
Lucy stands with her arms by her sides, her hands ready.

    
"Move out," Benton says. "Now."

    
"So a couple of you Whirly-Girls get together, think you're going to get a few bucks?" He stands before her, and she knows what is about to happen.

    
"Move out," Benton says emphatically. "It's over."

    
"You want the camera?" Lucy asks Dr. Paulsson. "You want the micro-recorder?" She has no recorder. Benton does. "You really want them?"

    
"We can just pretend this never happened," Dr. Paulsson says, smiling. "Give them to me. You got the information you wanted, now didn't you? So we'll just forget everything else. Let me have them."

    
She taps the cellular interface that is clipped to a belt loop, the wire connected to it running through a tiny hole inside her flight suit. She pushes a switch, turning off the interface. Benton's screen just went blank. He can hear and talk but he can't see.

    
"Don't," Benton says in her ear. "Get out. Now."

    
"Sweetie," Lucy mocks Dr. Paulsson. "What a joke. Can't imagine anybody calling you Sweetie. That's sickening. You want the camera, the recorder, come and get them."

    
He rushes at her and runs right into her fist, and then his legs go out from under him and he is on the floor with a grunt and a cry and she is on his back, a knee pinning his right arm, her left hand pinning his left arm. His arms are wrenched and trapped painfully behind his back.

    
"Let me go!" he yells. "You're hurting me!"

    
"Lucy! No!" Benton is talking but she isn't listening.

    
She grips the back of Dr. Paulsson's hair, and she is breathing hard and tastes her rage, and she lifts his head by his hair. "Hope you had a nice time today, Sweetie," Lucy says, jerking his head by the hair. "I should beat your fucking brains out. You molest your own daughter? You let other perverts do it when they came to your house for sex games? You molest her in her own bedroom right before you moved out last summer?" She presses his head against the floor and holds it hard as if she is drowning him in the white tile floor. His cheek is squashed against the floor. "How many lives have you ruined, you motherfucker?" She bangs his head on the floor, hard enough to remind him she could smash his brains out. He grunts and cries out.

    
"Lucy! Stop!" Benton's voice pierces her eardrum. "Move out!"

    
She blinks, suddenly aware of what she is doing. She can't kill him. She must not kill him. She gets off him. She starts to kick him in the head, but stops her foot. She breathes hard, sweating, backing off, wanting to kick him, wanting to beat him to death, and she could, easily. "Don't move," she snarls, backing away from him, her heart flying as she realizes just how much she wants to kill him. "Lie right there and don't move. Don't move!"

    
She reaches toward the countertop and snatches up her bogus FAA forms, then backs up to the door and opens it. He stays down and doesn't move, his face against the floor. Blood drips from his nose and is bright red against the white tile.

    
"You're finished," she says to him from the doorway, wondering where the plump woman is, the secretary, glancing out toward the stairs and seeing no one. The house is perfectly quiet and she is alone inside it with Dr. Paulsson, just the way he planned. "You're finished. You're lucky you're not dead," she says, shutting the door behind her.

Chapter 47

    
Along the
narrow streets inside the training camp, five agents armed with Beretta Storm nine-millimeter rifles with Bush-nell scopes and tactical lights move in from different directions on a small stucco house with a cement roof.

    
The house is old and in poor repair, and the small overgrown yard is gaudy with inflated Santas, snowmen, and candy canes. Palm trees are sloppily strung with multicolored lights. Inside the house, a dog barks nonstop. The agents wear their Storms on tactical slings that angle across their bodies and hold the muzzles down at a forty-degree angle. Dressed in black, they are not wearing body armor, which is unusual on a raid.

    
Rudy Musil waits calmly inside the stucco house behind a high barricade of turned-over tables and upended chairs that block the narrow doorway leading into the kitchen. He is dressed in camouflage pants and tennis shoes and armed with an AR-15 that is not a lightweight search weapon like the Storm but a high-power combat weapon with a twenty-inch barrel that can take out the enemy up to three hundred yards away. He doesn't need a weapon to clear the house because he is in the house. He moves from the doorway to the broken window over the sink, looking out. He sees movement behind a Dumpster about fifty yards from the house.